Svetlana: Lower East Side tutor

Certified Tutor

I am a professional researcher in the midst of a career transition. I came to America in 1995 to Kent State Graduate School. My physics background, experimental and computer skills have made me very comfortable with a wide range of scientific fields.

I have extensive experience mentoring and advising students at the college and graduate school level. While in graduate school I had to teach college physics recitations. As a post-doctoral fellow and research associate I have been working in a multi-disciplinary environment in the clinical research laboratories at Mayo and Cleveland Clinic. Working on research projects means a lot of team work, that includes training summer students and graduate students. Many times, I had to make sure that students understood their projects and could reproduce and troubleshoot experiments. I had to design the training plans for developing practical skills, as well as provide help in publishing data, editing overview and data analysis for poster and oral presentations.

My philosophy in teaching is to help students see the main ideas and what follows after them. My starting point would be to explain why a particular concept is important and how its principals are used. I like to start with an interesting example or event that makes students realize the usefulness of concepts and principals, so they can correlate it with their previous knowledge. Most of the students start a class very motivated and easily memorize ideas for a short time, but by next semester they have forgotten everything they learned. That is what I really would like to overcome, so I think students need to get very solid ideas which help them remember these concepts for the long term. I believe every student has great potential. It is my job to tap into that potential.

Because I know how it feels to be frustrated and limited by time, I hope to create an enjoyable learning environment for those I tutor. To add a little about myself, I grew up in Russia and embrace my heritage. I love pets, mostly cook myself, and really dont like to have a messy house. Lately, I have been traveling a lot in Europe, travel is something which I have always loved. There are a few sports I also enjoy such as pickle ball and tennis. I adore different weather seasons and love to go on long hikes.